The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011)

director Bill Condonviewed: 04/25/2012

For the Twilight series, I’ve been in for a penny, in for a pound despite really despising the films. Why I’m compelled to finish the series is becoming more and more of a mystery to me. For the life of me, I can hardly remember what happens from one to the other. It seems like a whole lot of nothing.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (I hate segmented series movie titles) actually got some of the worst reviews of the series, making me hope briefly that this might be more fun. There were rumors of grown men passing out during the birth scene, so gruesome and intense it was, another flash of potential and possibility for note. Still, it was not with bated breath that I awaited my opportunity to see the movie.

I’ll sum this one up for you. Bella marries Edward. Jake pouts. She has sex with Edward while he is a vampire and she is still a living human, though everyone is worried that he will kill her in the process. Lo and behold, she gets knocked up. With a baby that might be evil (it grows super fast.) She looks heroin chic in the process. The birth scene is gruesome but not the most gruesome thing I’ve seen (though for PG-13, this film is seriously pushing the envelope.) It’s a girl. Bella dies and becomes a vampire.

I’m sure that this has been discussed by others but these films/books have this fairly conservative approach to sex. Sex is deadly dangerous (with a vampire – it might kill you), so you get married first (of course). And when you get pregnant, even if the fetus is a threat to the mother’s life, you do not abort, you have the baby, no matter what the humans or the vampires or the werewolves think! Bella keeps her baby, even though it kills her (luckily she had this whole becoming a vampire back-up plan.) It’s like these films are stumping for the Republican “war on women” agendas.

I have no idea what’s left to deal with in Part 2. I really don’t care either. I’ll watch it. I’ve watched them all so far.